Ancient City of Aleppo
© Silvan Rehfeld / UNESCO Ancient City of Aleppo (Syrian Arab Republic)
Name one other government in the world which would allow encircled al-Qaeda militants to evacuate to spare further damage to city?

Syria and Russia have organized the evacuation of al-Qaeda militants from its crumbling encircled positions in eastern Aleppo to another part of rebel-held Syria where they will be free to continue the fight against the Syrian army.

Let that fact sink in for a while.

Do you reckon that if al-Qaeda fighters were holed up in downtown Seattle and had finally been broken militarily that the US would organize buses to take them to Detroit to continue their fight from there?

And what do you reckon would have happened to Syrian army soldiers if al-Qaeda and friends had prevailed in Aleppo? Actually we do not have to guess much. When rebels took the encircled al-Kindi hospital in Aleppo in 2013 the captured surviving soldiers were dragged out and shot in the back of the head by al-Qaeda while the rest of the rebels cheered. Three months later the proud executioners released the video of their execution for their Gulf donors to enjoy.

The pro-regime-change media is talking a lot about "moderate rebels" but let's be serious. Do you think if thousands of "moderates" holed up together with al-Qaeda in eastern Seattle that US would care to distinguish between them?

In fact we do not need to imagine. During the US occupation of Iraq al-Qaeda (unlike in Syria) was only a very small part of the "Sunni insurgency". An "insurgency" which fought for a perfectly legitimate goal -- to expel a foreign invading army. Even then the US did not care to distinguish between the moderate resistance to occupation and resistance offered by al-Qaeda.

Damaged buildings in Aleppo, Syria
© Khalil Ashawi / Reuters
Media friendly to pro-regime-change governments spent a lot of time talking about east Aleppo civilians and their fear of the government but here is a very pertinent fact. Of the 60,000-80,000 east Aleppo civilians in the rebel pocket only a few thousand asked to be evacuated together with retreating rebels. The vast overwhelming majority instead opted to remain in government-controlled Syria.

I am sorry but given all this evidence one has to regard the conclusion of Aleppo battle and Syrian army win as a good thing. Preferable to either continued fighting or a win for the head-chopping rebels.

Western government-friendly media is working overtime to dispute that but they themselves admit they are just parroting secondhand and thirdhand reports that they can not verify. There used to be a principle that the graver the accusation the greater the amount of evidence needed. This seems to have been turned on its head by the media which now appears to believe that as long as the accusation you are making is sufficiently high pitched and shocking no evidence is needed at all.

May I remind you also that this is the same media which was almost completely uninterested as the US blockaded, invaded and poisoned the city of Falluja in Iraq and many others.

I certainly will not suggest that Syrian government and supporters have not killed any innocents in Aleppo. They certainly have. In as much they can scarcely be upheld as models of virtue. (As indeed neither can the Allies of WWII.) However in the relative sense it is highly unlikely that the US or the al-Qaeda-led rebels would have killed less in their place. In fact there is plenty to think they would have been far less merciful and far more indiscriminate.